


a thing of beauty, golden

by betony



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Marriage of Aphrodite and Hephaestus (Greek Mythology)
Genre: Backstory, Courtship, F/M, Falling In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:27:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: Olympus’ one-century wonder appears in Hephaestus’ workshop between one strike on his anvil and the next.
Relationships: Aphrodite/Hephaestus
Comments: 21
Kudos: 168
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	a thing of beauty, golden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/gifts).



> Title taken from the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Happy holidays, the_alchemist, and I hope you enjoy this!

Olympus’ one-century wonder appears in Hephaestus’ workshop between one strike on his anvil and the next. For a handful of heartbeats, he tries to ignore her; too well he knows the stories and he need not be in danger of losing his head over her, as his half-brothers already have. But his visitor is nothing if not persistent, and at last he raises his eyes to meet the amused gaze of shining Aphrodite. 

“I should like you to craft me something,” she announces, as though she had a right to demand anything of him, as though he had thrown himself at her feet alongside the other gods. “I’m afraid it may be difficult, but I’ve been informed you are the one to ask.”

Hephaestus grunts. He must earn his keep, after all. If he does not do as Aphrodite asks, soon enough it will be one of her swains at his door, demanding satisfaction for his lady love. Easier to finish the business off and return to worthwhile work.

“I require,” Aphrodite says, thankfully not requiring further prompting, “a girdle. One that should make whosoever wears it seem the most beautiful creature in the world.”

How stupid! Hephaestus thinks. Before he can stop himself, he rumbles. “I have it on good authority from a thousand besotted fools that _you_ are the most beautiful creature in any world. Why bother?”

To his surprise, she takes no offense at his words. Instead her charcoal-black eyes narrow. “Why, yes,” she says, in a tone that suggests she thinks it is Hephaestus who is the stupid one--imagine! “I am. That is why I require it, because anyone wearing it must seem to the eyes of others to be me. How else, pray tell, am I to have an instant of freedom when I wish it?”

That is how Hephaestus learns not to underestimate the Lady of Cythera. 

* * *

He is no more prompt in acknowledging her when she returns to collect her commission. In fairness he is somewhat preoccupied in putting the finishing touches upon the girdle. It had been a tricky piece of work, coaxing the golden links into developing a taste for artifice, and still he cannot be entirely certain they won’t turn to malice instead. Those twists of gold that directly declare their wickedness he sets aside; perhaps he might melt them down into a necklace or some other frippery, provided he doesn’t absentmindedly bestow it as a gift to some innocent or another. 

He straightens to shake the sweat of his labors from his shoulders, and by then he reckons he’s made her wait long enough. “Forgive me,” he tells her insincerely, and Aphrodite laughs.

“There is no need,” she says, and the cast of her mouth is impish. “I diverted myself easily enough, admiring the view.”

Hephaestus considers pointing out that she has been standing in the wrong direction entirely to peer down onto Etna’s heights, but decides it doesn’t matter. The prickle at his neck was nothing, as his feeling of being watched. He swings his arms about, suddenly uncomfortable, and hides it by taking up her prize from the forge.

She takes the girdle from his hands eagerly enough, but instead of donning it herself, she loops it about the waist of one of the spare automatons he has lying about the place. “There,” she says, clapping her hands with satisfaction, “what do you think?”

Professional curiosity is not enough to lure him into looking, and courtesy is a grace with which he is unacquainted (charming as Charis and Aglaia could be). He can imagine the scene well enough— Aphrodite delighted at seeing herself duplicated. Doubtless she intends to use it to escape the most persistent of her suitors: Ares, perhaps, too bloody-minded to take a simple hint.

“It’ll do,” he answers gruffly, and tells himself he is glad to see her go.

Later he surprises himself by thinking of Athena again. Years have passed, and still her rejection troubles him. It is not that he bears her any ill will. —he knows her vows and her vocation, after all, and his ugly visage could have hardly tempted her from them—but that he should have troubled her with so little hope of success. He wonders she still deigns to speak to him, and with such patience and kindness.

All that is past. He knows better now.

* * *

The next time Aphrodite visits him, he assumes there is something wrong with the merchandise he gave her. He has been in a fearsome mood all day. Earlier an assembly was called on Olympus, and Hephaestus had had to go, which meant endless hours of complaining about how long it took Hephaestus to deliver that winged helmet or that sky chariot, without any thought to the effort put into any of it. He thinks he might go mad with irritation, all the more when he hears the music of her footsteps in his workshop.

She has no complaints, nor any more requests, which already make her more bearable than most of the people whose presence he’s suffered already today. She brings jokes with her, light and laughter, as well sweetmeats, and once those are done she sits and watches him work in silence.

He can’t fathom what she wants from him. It makes him uneasy.

He finds out when he stumbles against her, his sooty fingers smearing her skin, and instead of recoiling, Aphrodite smiles.

“S-Sunset,” he stammers, pushing her away. “You must have far more demands upon your time than this lonely forge.”

“Yes,” she agrees as she turns to go, “but none I like half so well.”

* * *

When Hephaestus was a young god, growing to manhood under Mother Thetis and Mother Eurynome’s care, there was only one spot in the great oceans where he was forbidden to intrude. 

It was all that was left in this world of a great wound that had yet to heal, Mother Eurynome said. No one could be sure of the form in which it would choose to settle, but one thing was sure—doubtless it would be fierce and terrible, far too much for an inexperienced godling to bear.

Naturally this only meant there was nowhere Hephaestus wanted to go quite so badly. 

Stealing away from Mother Thetis was the easiest thing imaginable; Lord Poseidon had come to call, and she was already flustered.

A wound in the world proved to look like nothing so much as a whirlpool, circling in luminous coils into the depths. He reached out a hand, awestruck, to touch it before withdrawing quickly and retreating. It took him some time before he could catalogue the sensation, as he did every other: not been flame-bright to the touch, or ice-cold, but instead full of such sudden startled delight that his chest ached. He had spent the next decade in his forge, trying desperately to recreate a fraction of what he had seen and felt in silver and pearls, before admitting defeat. He found his throat ached, and his eyes burned with fatigue and despair. He is reminded forcibly of the aftershocks of heavenly thunder. 

Mother Eurynome had been right, he decided then and there: whatever the entity within the waves might be, that woke fierce joy and sudden terror all the same, it was far better avoided by the likes of him. 

* * *

In the wake of Zeus’ proclamation, Etna erupts: not once, not twice, but thrice, so that the ground runs red with flame and the Cyclopes tremble below. Hephaestus does not care. Let other divinities address the mortals’ frightened pleas for mercy; Hephaestus is entirely too busy.

“Having a tantrum,” says a tart voice, and he looks up into grey eyes. He might have known. The other gods know better than to disturb him in such circumstances, but who expects such discretion from the Goddess of Wisdom?

“Don’t scowl so,” Athena tells him. “Anyone would think you were being sacrificed rather than married.”

“Blood sacrifice might at least be over and done with sooner,” Hephaestus grumbles, idly reaching for the scrap metal he keeps about the place. 

Athena sighs. She looks suddenly very young, once more, and Hephaestus remembers once more that he had never felt so inspired as when they had worked together. He wishes he might interest her at least in a platonic partnership, but the ghost of Pallas had marked her too deeply for that. 

“The wedding plans were my doing,” Athena admits, ignorant of his thoughts. “Father might have proposed it, but I spoke to him of the uproar I had seen over who might win the hand of the Goddess of Love and Beauty. I told him that there was none better to soothe over arguments than a misshapen, misanthropic blacksmith all parties concerned might loathe in peace.”

He looks at her, suddenly betrayed. Bad enough to imagine it one more joke at his expense on the part of Zeus Thunderer, but to know it had come from her, the first ally he had known on Olympus, the woman he had once dreamed of--His face burned. He looked away. 

Athena patted his hand. “Dear Hephaestus. You are my friend, and your happiness means much to me.” Her face hardened to the form her enemies saw upon the field, the grimace that could rival the Aegis itself. “But never doubt I would sacrifice you in an instant if it meant Olympus’ well-being.”

It is as close to comfort as he imagines she is capable of giving. His throat is too tight to speak; instead he turns away to his anvil pointedly. Wise Athena needs no further dismissal, but before she goes, she says: “You might consider that it was _you_ I spoke of sacrificing. Not her.”

Before he can ask what that means, she is gone in a flutter of owl-feathers.

* * *

“Well-met,” says Aphrodite, her face brightening. “And welcome.” She invites him further on into her chambers, set with ivory and coral. To his surprise, there is no looking-glass anywhere to be found; then again, he supposes she hardly needs one to be sure of her attractiveness. “What brings you to see me?”

“I had a question,” he begins, awkwardly. He hardly knows where to sit; he imagines he would only spread his workshop’s filth about, but Aphrodite flicks her fingers at him impatiently and he finds himself perching upon a settee despite himself. “It was a difficult question. I thought you might know the answer.”

Aphrodite rests her chin upon her hands. “It’s Apollo who does prophecy, you know. And naturally Athena is known to be cleverer--”

“Athena posed it,” he blurts out, and Aphrodite’s face goes very still for an instant.

“Ah,” she says and leans back. “Did she. And it was _I_ you came to for assistance.”

Hephaestus can’t think of anything else to say, and so he settles for a grunted, “Yes.”

“Well?” she sighs. “What is it, then? I will help you in any way I can.”

“Athena said--she hinted--Father Zeus means to marry us to one another. You and me.”

Her face betrays no surprise whatsoever. “And?’

“Do you see no reason to object?” Somehow this upsets him more than anything else. “ _You_ and--and me!”

She rises to her feet, and Hephaestus is reminded forcibly of his own nervous energy in Athena’s presence. Aphrodite must indeed be anxious for this interview to end, and for him to go. 

“I may not be crafty or cunning,” she begins, “but you’ll find I can be quite ruthless when I desire. It is in my nature after all.”

Hephaestus nods. The other gods might not know her, but he remembers all too well the whirlpool born of Uranos’ desperate, deceived love. 

“I will have what I want,” she says, “come what may, and I am quite afraid that what I want is you.”

He can’t breathe. This is worse than the pain of being crippled, this is worse than Zeus’ mouth twisting with disgust, this is worse than his mother’s hoarse sobs when he tried to protect her as a child and failed. This is--

“And yet--” she tilts her head to study him “--I find what I want almost as much is your contentment with the match. Or at the very least your acquiescence. So.”

She goes to her wardrobe and takes the girdle before slipping it around her waist. Hephaestus studies her toes fixedly and wishes he had never left his workshop. Already his head spins with so many new possibilities, and the worn aching muscle of his heart creaks from disuse. 

“What do you see?” Aphrodite asks, gentle but resolute.

He looks. She is not the goddess he knows, or any goddess, but a creature of bronze, living metal, all bearing the marks of his work. She is a thousand designs he has not yet dreamed into being. She is--

“You see I can still be of use to you,” she says, and her voice is distant. “Even if I am not who you…”

“Take it off,” he tells her. “You’re just as beautiful without. I tried to tell you, before.”

She looks up at him, herself again, with sudden startled delight, and reaches for his hands. “I knew you,” she says, and her eyes are bright. “I was lonely, and friendless, and then you came. I’ve never forgotten.”

Hephaestus thinks to say something already painfully evident, such as _Nor I,_ or _you came for me too,_ or _I love you_ , and decides against it in favor of more decisive action. 

He leaves a streak of soot on her face when he bends to kiss her, forgets to apologize — and Aphrodite smiles back at him nonetheless.


End file.
